The Priceless Pencil
by Dan Rush
Summary: The event that made Osamu Tezuka as taken from accounts. The 1945 fire bombing of Osaka.


**Priceless Pencil**

The event that made Osamu Tezuka

By Dan Rush

Adapted from the 1995 Kodansha School manga "Kame-da Manga Osamu" and from Mister Tezuka's personal writings, interviews, friends and associates.

Forewords

Among the many mementos stored at the Osamu Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka, Japan, one important item has no fancy glass case. It's not prominently displayed nor featured with any elaborate fair, perhaps as Osamu Tezuka wished. If you walk down to the basement where visitors can try their hand at making their own classic short animated movies, you'll see an animatronic Tezuka working quietly over the drawing desk where so many of his comic creations were brought to life.

What you may not notice among the collection of papers, books and tools scattered about the desk is a discrete number 2 pencil. Nothing marks its importance to its former owner, no tag, no history plate and yet this little object holds a reminder of how history could have been different and how fate can turn on such small things.

**March 13, 1945**

The 5th year of World War II

In Europe, the Western allies have broken the back of Germany's last offensive at the Battle of the Bulge and are rolling their way towards the Rhine River. The Russians are crossing the Eastern border of Poland on their way to Berlin.

In the Pacific, the last remnants of Japanese troops in the Philippines are being wiped out. The battle on Iwo Jima continues. Japan's Navy is non-existent but her Kamikaze pilots are turning the decks of America ships red. On this day the aircraft carrier USS Franklin is a flame, 800 of her sailors will be dead by days end.

President Franklin Roosevelt returns from his last meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Tyrant Joseph Stalin. He will live 30 more days till he dies from a brain hemorrhage.

Osamu Tezuka is 16 years old. The Japanese government has marshaled every school child in the effort to keep Japan's diminishing war industry alive. He works at a factory making asbestos fire panels for fighter planes in the Yodogawa District of Osaka. His mother, sister and little brother live with their his grand parents away from Takarazuka for fear of attacks by the American planes that fly almost unopposed over the country. His father Yutaka is an army infantryman in Manchuria. Tezuka doesn't know if his father is still alive.

U.S. Air Force General Curtis Le May has changed the role of the B-29's based at Tinian Atoll in the Marianas Islands. No longer will they bomb from high altitudes with high explosive bombs. Starting with Osaka they will fly at 10,000 feet armed with a mix of incendiary clusters, napalm and 500 pound bombs. In his words…he will roast the Japanese into submission.

The former asbestos plant was part of the vast Osaka Army Arsenal works on and near the grounds of Osaka Castle as seen in this pre-war photo.

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In this tourist brochure of Osaka Castle, the old armament complex took up the large park area to the right of the castle grounds and rounded up to the north and left. The only remaining buildings from the complex are the old 4th Imperial Army Division HQ (Marked with a 3) which sits within the castle grounds. Today it is the Osaka Municipal Museum. The other is the weapons chemical analysis laboratory (boarded up and abandoned). However some of the foundations for other buildings still exist. The exact location of Tezuka's factory within the complex is unknown.

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**Chapter One**

"Hey?..." Shinwa asked as he gave the kid at the drill press a slight bump with an elbow. "Did you finish it?"

He got a back handed smack in reply. "Cut it out! You shouldn't do that, it'll get me noticed! And it's dangerous to bother someone working around machinery."

"I thought you might have finished it." Shinwa said as he looked about. The penalty for slacking when one should be working was usually severe. The task master was already in full joy up to mid-morning as Shinwa saw him smacking away on another kid's face with an old riding crop. He felt a hand shoving something between the button holes in his shirt.

"There! Done! Now stop bothering me!" Osamu snorted. Seems Shinwa didn't clean his ears the night before…

"Hey! Did you hear about our balloon bombs? Rumor has it they totally flattened Seattle. By the way? Where's Seattle?"

Osamu removed a panel of asbestos and walked it over to a girl working on a lathing machine. "Fantastic, what did it do flatten some poor woman's flower bed? Come on Shinwa even you can't be that empty headed?"

Shinwa stopped to quickly look at the picture Osamu had drawn him. "Which one is this again?"

"Goofy." Osamu replied. "And hide that! You want me to get tortured don't you?"

"Well thanks." Shinwa said as he placed the drawing in his uniform pocket. "Have you heard anything about your Dad yet?"

"No. nothing from my mother on him anyway. I don't think anything's getting through, letters or any thing else. Last letter I got from him was a year ago"

Shinwa leaned against a steel pillar. "My brother's been sent to Okinawa. Do you think the Americans are going to invade us?"

Osamu went back to his drill press and grabbed another panel. "I don't know. I don't think I…it's better if we just don't think of it."

"They're talking of ration cuts again. I wonder if you could eat shoe leather? Shoe leather sushi, that sounds desperately ingenious. Hey! maybe you and I could go into business? Flat Foot Uchimatchi! That sounds like a cool leather rice roll."

Osamu laughed. "Only you could have a sense of humor around here Shinwa."

"_**Our whole old elementary class was there working. Shinwa had been the class clown, he was probably the only one who'd survive the war because of his weight. I don't know how he was able to keep himself so bulked up with the little food we all got every day."**_

Osamu started drilling holes again when he heard the annoying screeching voice of the taskmaster pulsing through his ears. He looked to see the man whipping another boy over the head. "Jerk" he thought.

"GET BACK TO WORK!" The near toothless man snarled as each slap on unprotected flesh resounded through the work shop.

"But I have to go to the bathroom! I'll wet myself!" The small boy replied.

"You're worried about your bladder while our men are dying! You undisciplined little bastard! I'll…"

Suddenly a hand snatched the crop and held the angry man's arm at bay. "Come on Sensei…what good will it serve anyone if he comes down with a bladder infection? You know one less worker means one less dead enemy soldier right?"

The old man snarled at Shinwa and jerked his arm away. "You touch me like that again and you'll pay dearly for it." He then shook his crop at Tamao. "Hurry up. If you're not back in one minute I will dock your rations for the day!

Tamao cringed, then look at Shinwa. "What are you lookin at me for? He said hurry up dufus!" The larger boy snapped as he slapped Tamao off his head.

"_**Tamao, next to myself, was the smallest kid in our school and the most picked on…when anyone dared to do it in Shinwa's presence. Shinwa was a bit of a bully but he always protected Tamao as his personal todie. What Tamao didn't have in size though, he had in brains. He knew more about machines than most children did at 10 years old. He'd probably be a famous scientist by now."**_

Osamu finished up another panel when there came another tap on his shoulder. "Here, sign this." The boy holding the clip board said as he passed a pair of boots.

"New boots?" Osamu replied. "How did you get these?"

"Never mind." Kenichi replied as he pointed down. "Those are still your work boots. These one's you wear during military drills. It'll help things to last around here."

"_**Kenichi Oguri, our class president, what an operator. He'd make a great Yakuza boss or a politician if they let kids run the country. He wasn't a week at the factory and they made him production director and floor clerk. We were always getting things other plants in the complex couldn't. There was a rumor he had a direct hook up line to the Emperor himself"**_

"Hey…I think you should know? You're being watched." Kenichi said as he walked with Osamu.

"By who?" Osamu asked.

"The staff, maybe the Kempeitai." (Kempeitai were Japan's Secret Police)

Osamu picked up another box of panels. "What for?"

"Conduct unbecoming…Pro-Western subversive tendencies…."

Osamu smirked. "Oh God they found my secret panty stash? Damn."

"Will you be serious?" Kenichi warned. "You left one of your scribblings in the bathroom and they found it! Flash Gordon? What were you thinking?"

"Uh…Flash Gordon defends the first Japanese outpost on Jupitor? That's subversive?" Osamu complained. "Everybody's so thin skinned. It's not like I'm screaming treason all over the place!"

Kenichi pulled Osamu along. "That's not the point! Any form of Western influence is considered subversive treason! They could shoot you for it! Maybe if you had our troops stopping Flash Gordon from putting an American colony on Mars, they would take favor on that?"

Osamu thought for a moment. "How about this? Our troops get overwhelmed by Venusian Amazonian women and elect one as our Prime Minister? God knows we need someone with a brain the way things are going"

Kenichi shook his head in frustration. "You are bound and determined to push your luck! Will you stop talking so loudly?"

"I have to make up for my physical weakness in some way." Osamu replied.

Kenichi closed his hands together, "Osamu? Promise me…promise me you'll be careful? Remember your idea for after the war? If you do become famous, you'll need a good agent and I'll need a job."

Osamu smirked. "I need your resume."

"You suck." Kenichi replied with a huff.

"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" The air whistle blew announcing a short break in the 12 hour work shift. Osamu reached for the power switch on the drill and grabbed the leather bag at his feet.

"_**I had a small bag with me at work which had all my writing and drawing materials. With paper being so scarce I found ways to remove the ink and re-use sheets over and over again. The only time I could have to draw during the day was during work breaks and those didn't last ten minutes at a time. I got very adept at speed drawing panels, not easy when you consider I was in the bathroom the majority of times trying to hide my copies of Disney and Max Flescher characters."**_

Walking to the bathrooms, Osamu's mind whirled with new ideas. He thought to himself…"Secret Japanese Agent Ogata penetrates the top secret American base. He carefully breaks the combination on the secret vault and steps inside to copy the plans for the new American Super Bomb!"

Osamu closed the stall door and pulled the stack of paper from his bag. "Now what should I draw? Mighty Mouse! Mighty Mouse stopping a gang of American cats…from…bombing Japanese mice in Tokyo!"

"_**If I could say I had any weaknesses, besides being addictive to drawing, it was not keeping track of time…and ignoring sound."**_

Suddenly the stall door flew open, a hand reached in and Osamu went flying into a face plant against a wall!

"YOU LITTLE SCUM! COME WITH ME!" The taskmaster screamed as he dragged Osamu behind him out the bathroom door and across the factory floor. "SLOTHFULL WEASEL! YOU'VE DRAWN YOUR LAST INSULTING COMIC!"

From across the factory floor, Shinwa and Kenichi were pushing their way past the curious workers who watched Osamu get beaten on his way to the main office. "I warned him! I warned him!" Kenichi yelped. He almost reached Osamu when Shinwa pulled him back.

"You want to get beaten up?" Shinwa warned.

"They're going to shoot him!" Kenichi cried.

"That's just a threat." Shinwa said scoffing. "Like they can afford to do that. They'll probably flog him as an example…"

Shinwa thought for a moment then snatched Kenichi by an arm. "Not over my dead body."

"_**I knew I was in big trouble and drawing wasn't what I thought about. In my flurry of sketching I'd missed the whistle. I was ten minutes beyond break time and those who were usually late to get back to work sometimes ended up in the stockade for weeks…**_

_**They usually came back cut and bruised…the result of clumsy "accidents"."**_

The task master threw Osamu into the office and slammed the door behind him. Ahead of him sat the shift supervisor, a man who looked even more a creepy figure than old toothless, who stood still yelling in Osamu's ear.

The supervisor stood up and thrusted a piece of paper in Osamu's face. "Did you draw this?"

Osamu didn't answer.

"Did you draw this! Are you deaf?"

"I could hear you Sir if the Task Master would please stop screaming at me." Osamu replied as he stood at attention.

"Flash Gordon?" The Supervisor said as he looked at the drawing and stood up. "A nice rendition." He said with a nod. "You like drawing American shit? Wasting important time, satisfying yourself with this crap while the men of our nation give their blood for your comfort?"

Osamu shook as the man walked up and slapped him hard in the face. "Explain yourself you insignificant little rat!"

"Sir…I…."

"SHUT UP!" The man snapped as he took the bag of art supplies from the Task Master. "See your little bag?" The man said as he began ripping things apart. "Now you don't. We're going to teach you a lesson you shirking little shit."

"**_Things went quiet at that moment. It felt like an eternity of torture. I was starting to feel tears coming from my eyes and I screwed them shut so hard they hurt. I knew if they saw one tear drop, I would really be doomed. So I kept them closed and opened my fool mouth instead. Then I felt the pencil, I was still holding a pencil?"_**

"Sir? Is this where you shoot me?" Osamu asked.

"What?" The Supervisor asked stunned.

"This is where I get taken out and shot for treason right?"

The Supervisor slackened. "You wish. But fortunate for you we don't execute stupid children." He turned to the Task Master. "Kindly take our miscreant to the tower."

"_**The Tower? That conjured all sorts of nasty thoughts. I thought about the stories of the Tower of London…sometimes my imagination made me want to slap my own face."**_

The Task Master dragged Osamu out of the factory and along the length of the building to the very end where he stopped him in front of a ladder.

"Now…you're going to climb to the top of the tower and stay there till tomorrow morning when we bring you a relief." The man said as he pointed.

"_**You'd think I'd learn to keep quiet."**_

"Uh….why up there?" Osamu asked.

The Task Master snorted. "You're our Air Raid watch. It's your job to warn us if any enemy planes are approaching and from which direction. You will stay up there till we come get you. Guess what will happen to you if you screw this up?"

Osamu winced. "I'll get shot?"

"My God, you've grown a brain. NOW CLIMB UP THERE YOU IDIOT!"

"But what happens if there's an air raid? I could get killed." Osamu replied worryingly.

"_**Well I wasn't exactly Einstein at 16 years old."**_

"Then you'll learn how worthless drawing stupid comic books can be, won't you? GET UP THERE!" The Task Master whipped Osamu till he scurried up the side and flopped into the tower perch.

"**_I was still holding that pencil in my hand. Can you believe that?"_**

Osamu looked at the pencil in his hand and blew from his mouth. "You can really put yourself in some stupid spots Osamu. Now I know what a chicken feels like on a stump."

Resting his head on a hand with a dissatisfied huff from his lips. "Not even a bucket up here to go the bathroom in? Lost all my art supplies, I should have been more patient."

Osamu felt the rumbling in his stomach. "No rations for the rest of the day? This really sucks." Looking around the tower-top again, Osamu spied a pair of binoculars swinging from a nail above his head. "Huh?" He said to himself as he started looking around the Castle grounds and out into the city beyond . "This might not be that bad. Don't have to work in the factory and cough my lungs out for once at least so I shouldn't complain."

After a half hour, Osamu started to enjoy his punishment. He stood on the ledge of the watch tower, leaning outwards with the binoculars to his eyes, his fate in the hope his hand wouldn't suddenly slip.

"Aye Captain! Treasure Planet ho! By thunder it is! Left of Saturn by a thousand miles she is!" Come left to 260 degrees!"

"TEZUKA!" Came a scream from below that almost made Osamu fall and loose the binoculars from his hand. He fell backwards into the tower. "IF I CATCH YOU ACTING STUPID AGAIN, IT WILL BE A WHIP ON YOUR BACK!"

Osamu struggled to his feet and saluted back. "Sorry Sir! Just keeping awake! I won't let the country down, I promise!"

When the Supervisor started walking away however…

"Fifteen men on a priate space ship….yo ho ho and a bottle of Space Rum!" Osamu sang to himself as he danced about the tower.

"**_I wasn't the perfect image of an elite Japanese soldier. I'd probably be crazy enough to do a Can Can dance during a drill march. Any way it was about quarter past two O'Clock in the afternoon. You know growing boys and their tendency to wander and prioritize their thinking…"_**

"Whistle"…."She's cute. That one's cute. Now there's a Geisha!" Osamu was training his binoculars down across the landscape going from one target to the next…till he brought his sight back up into the horizon over downtown Osaka…

"_**It starts with glints of light, like a cloud of glitter thrown during a wedding party. The American B-29's were painted silver, I think it was a sort of brag as if to say…"You can't get us! Hah hah! At first it's a single off and on flash of light but as they get closer it's like a hundred flashbulbs going off in the sky."**_

Osamu winced his eyes and looked again…"Damn…" He thought as he reached for the alert bell behind his back and started banging it furiously with a hammer…

"ENEMY APPROACHING! ENEMY APPROACHING! AIR RAID! AID RAID!"

The Task Master came running out from the factory below. "WHERE? CAN YOU TELL WHICH WAY?"

Osamu pointed. "That way! I can't tell where they're going but there's a lot of them!" Osamu went back to watching the approaching planes as the alarm horns began to sound over the entire arsenal…

"THERE'S HUNDREDS…..THOUSANDS…A MILLION!" He screamed.

"_**Now I could begin to see their shapes starting to form, that's when our own artillery guns began to go off. At that distance you can't hear them right away but you start seeing the bursts as the shells explode, like someone's throwing a pepper shaker around. Totally useless since the planes are too high to hit. I wasn't exaggerating, I saw thousands of planes, an enormous still growing cloud of them and it was getting bigger with every second!"**_

"OSAMU! GET DOWN FROM THERE!" Kenichi screamed as he scrambled among the people trying to find cover.

"I CAN'T!" Osamu screamed back. "ENEMY COMING THIS WAY! GET TO A SHELTER!"

"_**Now the castle artillery starts firing and my ears are thumping with each concussion. You can definably see them clearly now with binoculars, big four engine monsters and if you can see them that clearly, it means the bombs are already on their way. The scary thing is the silence as the farthest bombs hit…you don't hear the impacts but you can see them, like a Tsunami. It hypnotizes you."**_

Osamu dropped his binoculars to his chestas the first bombs and incendiary canisters slammed into downtown Osaka. Their first target was the Kyobashi rail yards and the train station, where at that moment two passenger trains had pulled into the platforms full of people. First to hit were the incendiary canisters, thin tubes of ceramic that shattered and threw jellied gasoline and kerosene in every direction. Then came the 500 pound bombs. The result of the deadly mix was an incredible fireball…anyone within the sphere of ignition never had a chance.

The rail yard turned into a superheated caldron of flame, everything from wood, plaster, plastic, hay….human flesh…ignited which in turn ignited everything next to it. The combined destruction now rolled across Osaka towards the Arsenal, towards a terrified but transfixed Tezuka.

"**_As the bombs got closer, the sounds grew louder and the quaking below my feet more violent. Now I could hear the screams of the bombs as they rushed through the air on their way down. One whistle…..ten…hundreds…then a thousand or more screaming, screeching noises ran through my head but my eyes and my whole body were motionlessly fixed on the advancing wall of hell before me. I was awestruck!"_**

Now they were slamming into the Arsenal grounds. Osamu saw the Geisha he'd seen before now in shoeless flight with two soldiers trying to carry her…

"_**I saw a bomb hit behind them. It's hard to describe the instant eradication of human beings by such a thing…they just fell apart, what a tea cup does when it hits a hard floor. Just like that."**_

Osamu looked up as the explosions and fire are almost in his face…"Oh God!" He cringes back horrified…

"_**That's when I saw it. One bomb out of so many. It was like an eternity…hanging there in the air right in front of me. I might have thought…"This is how I'm going to be shattered?"**_

The bomb sails by Osamu's face, punches through the factory roof below and explodes with a thundering roar below!

"**_I felt the tower buckle under my feet and I turned to grab one of the posts on the purch. I still had that pencil in my hand!_**

"OH SHIT!" Tezuka screams as the tower starts falling apart and throws him out into space! He feels something flimsy at his back give way…

"**_I hit the roof of the factory, nothing more than nailed corrugated sheet metal. Now I'm going to die on a piece of machinery or get impaled."_**

Osamu hits something…but it's not a machine.

"**_I landed on a pile of scrap asbestos! I've been blown off a hundred foot tower, crashed through a roof and landed in a pile of used asbestos. I was having a good day!"_**

He rolls out of the pile amidst a raging inferno. The whole factory is awash with flaming kerosene. He feels the sting in his left leg, a nice bloody gash but at least he can still walk. Suddenly Osamu looks at his hands…

"Pencil!" He worries, he starts looking for it.

"_**Do you believe it? All of Osaka's being blown to bits, the building around me is a raging fire and what was I doing? Looking for a pencil! **_

He sees it on the floor surrounded by flames and dives for it, snatching it just as the roof that was over his head when he leaped has collapsed to the floor! Osamu looks at the pencil, looks at the debris behind him and smiles. "Holy shit! You're definably worth keeping!" He throws the pencil safely in his shirt pocket and stumbles through the destroyed factory and out the front door.

"_**Dante's Inferno, that's the best description I have. The whole arsenal was a sea of flame, you had their bombs going off, our own bombs going off, rockets going by my face, bullets popping and flying about. I passed this one soldier trying to fight the fire with a silly pump extinguisher. Big fire, little water hose, who do you think has the upper hand? I chose the path of least stupidity."**_

Osamu scrambles to one of the stone bridges between the outer castle island and the city beyond. At first he thinks getting into the moat would be the best thing to do…that is till he sees what's already in the water.

"_**I crawled over the hump of earth that surrounded the outer moat and looked down to see bodies floating in the water or lying half way out on the dirt sides, or lying in heaps around me. Some you couldn't recognize as people in a way you know what humans look like. Many were completely burned through, black and carbonized. Some had been in the throws of agony, their bodies contorted, limbs twisted, mouths screaming."**_

Osamu loses it. He starts screaming, crying for help, begging people to stop as they run franticly trying to escape the maelstrom of fire around them.

"_**I started running. No destination, no goal, not even thinking I just took off. Eventually an Army Medic caught me by the arm and slapped the senses back into my head. It was around 8 or 9pm and the fires were still raging. I was unceremoniously "drafted" to handle stretchers and make bandages at this make shift first aid station. We ran out of bandages in 15 minutes."**_

Osamu sits quietly, finally getting some rest, at midnight. The stench around him is almost an unbearable goulash of stink. He looks quietly at the pencil he's pulled from his pocket, a singularity that still retains its character, probably the only thing like that in a city that's smoldering around him. Lost again are sounds…sounds of dying people, those in pain, those crying and the crackles from what ever still burns beyond him.

**Chapter 2**

March 14, 1945

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Osamu sat atop a stone water collection box, his munched face contorted against his hand as he fought renewed sleep.

"**_I was exhausted, confused, amazed, bewildered…basically lost. Except for the lone concrete building dotted about. There was nothing left of the city. Every wooden building was gone, every tree, lamp post, street light, rickshaw, car…"_**

Osamu starts walking back towards the arsenal. Along the way he stops to look at a street car…

"_**There "were" people, I say so in past tense that they were once people. They were still holding on to the metal rails inside the cars. Still standing upright as if they were going to work…except all these people were now black hulls of what once they were. I found myself staring at it…till I slapped myself in the face."**_

Finally making his way back to the arsenal, Osamu stood before the remains of the asbestos factory. Machines stand where they were put but that's it. No walls, no roof, no offices, no remains of what had been his art supplies, nothing. Cautiously he walks onto the stone foundation to look around and finds the door on the floor that leads to the bomb shelter under the factory…

"_**I was stopped by this man who pulled me back from the door. "Don't want to go in there son." He said. When I asked him why not he replied. "It's full of dead bodies."**_

"_**Dead?" I thought. "Dead? My classmates? My friends? Everyone would have ran into the shelter, it was the safest place. The irony of the moment hit me as I felt the pencil in my pocket. Had I not been so disobedient and addicted to drawing…I'd be dead. It was a sober moment.**_

_**I learned later that Shinwa and Timao were among the dead. I hoped they didn't suffer, I know little Timao would have been terrified, Shinwa was probably telling him to be brave right to the end. I miss them dearly. Of my whole Elementary school class who worked there, only five of us survived…"**_

Osamu hears a voice calling him from behind and turns to see Kenichi running towards him. He catches him like a long lost brother and hugs him tightly.

"_**Good Kenichi and so foolishly lucky. "I was in the bathroom and hid under the sinks. When everything caught fire I got myself wet and jumped out the window."**_

_**He would survive the war and find work with NHK television in the late 50's. He introduced me to Mister Ladd from NBC in America and worked with him to get Tetsuwan Atom and later Jungle Leo to American television. He passed away in 1973 of lung cancer.**_

Osamu and Kenichi sat aside the destroyed factory and sighed together at the ruins around them. "So what do we do now?" Kenichi asked. "No place to work, can't get any food here, we might as well go home."

Osamu scratched his head. "A shoe leather sushi shop…that's it. We could open a sushi shop and sell Shoe leather California Rolls!"

"You're out of your mind." Kenichi replied. "Everything's ruined and you're cracking jokes."

"Gotta try something." Osamu said throwing his hands up. "Well start with high quality European grade cattle leather on rice then move on to grade A American saddle leather Sashimi, it'll be a big hit trust me, I'll do all the artwork, you do all the scheming, it'll be fantastic trust me."

"Osamu?" Kenichi snorted.

"What?" Tezuka replied.

"Just where are we going to get any wood to build a sushi shop?"

Osamu stopped and whipped out his pencil, smiling broadly at Kenichi.

"Sometimes Tezuka? I think you're a dimwitted dreamer." Kenichi snorted.

"It's a gift." Osamu replied as the boys walked away from the factory.

**Chapter 3**

**The San Diego Comic Con**

**Doubletree Hotel**

**1985**

Fred Schodt sat back in his chair amazed at what his long time friend had just told him. "You still have it? The pencil?"

Osamu Tezuka pulled it from his shirt pocket. "Yes. Hasn't left my shirt pocket in 40 years. Do you understand now Fred? Why I think? What drives my creations?"

Slowly, Tezuka walks to the window of his suite and looks out over San Diego bay. "There's less of us every day Fred. Those who suffered from that war and those who fought in it. Every time I see or meet people who make war sound trivial and fun, I just want to slap them senseless. War is not to be admired, celebrated, glorified like some perverted summer festival. Maybe if leaders, ignorants and just plain idiots could experience watching their own children, their family members or their best friends get slaughtered so cruelly…it might make them think."

Tezuka turned to Fred. "I don't hate America Fred. I don't hate Russians. I don't hate Arabs, Jews, Germans, Chinese or South Africans. I hate war. I hate its barbarity, I hate its monstrosity and I hate its inhumanity, its waste, its senseless, needless slaughter and the only people it seems who understand that are those who've suffered and fought in it!"

Teuzka holds the pencil in his hand. "That's why I carry this little thing. It reminds me every day that I was fortunate, that I was blessed at the cost of other people and I have a duty to their memory to do whatever it takes to end war and teach people to stop doing it. That's a promise I'll keep until the day I die."

**Osamu Tezuka passed away from stomach cancer on February 9th, 1989 a month after Emperor Hirohito, the last living World War II leader, died.**

The End____


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